


and at night be warm

by gsparkle



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Radio, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 07:45:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11778573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gsparkle/pseuds/gsparkle
Summary: If Kate would've just talked to him about theDog Copsfinale, then Clint wouldn't be lying in bed, staring pointlessly at the ceiling, when the Insomniacs Anonymous radio show comes on at 1 AM and changes his life three minutes at a time.





	and at night be warm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CloudAtlas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/gifts).



> Written for the **be_compromised** 2017 summer promptathon!
> 
> Here's the prompt I worked from: Natasha is a late night radio host. Clint is an insomniac that listens, and eventually starts calling in. They become friends through three minute conversations live on air. Unbeknownst to them, the rest of Natasha's ragtag insomniac listeners become incredibly invested in their relationship and put a plan into motion to get the two of them together. 
> 
> Title from _A Moveable Feast_ : "we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright."
> 
> oh my god I forgot to profusely thank my best best best friend **santiagoinbflat** who is, amongst many other things, a fantastic beta reader and a person I love very much  <3

It begins, as too many things in his life do, with _Dog Cops._

“How could they write off Sergeant Whiskers, Kate?” Clint despairs, flung over her couch in blatant distress. “He was just about to become a lieutenant!”

It’s late, and the stars wink through Kate’s enormous plate glass windows. “Clint,” she says without looking up from her phone, “Go home.”

Clint pulls his arm off his eyes so he can stare mournfully across the couch. “You’re kicking me out?” he protests. “In my time of need?”

Kate’s eyes roll. “It’s my own time of need. America’s coming over,” she clarifies when Clint stares without comprehension. “For sex. Get out.”

Clint gets out. Outside, the wind sweeps crisp leaves into his path, giving him multiple opportunities to stomp his frustrations out as he leaves Midtown and treks endlessly east to Bed-Stuy. He thinks the 45 minute commute will be enough time for him to work it all out of his system, but he gets home and still feels it jittering in his palms like captured lightning. Drinking coffee doesn’t help. Walking Lucky around the block doesn’t help. Lying on his back in bed, staring at the ceiling, and listening to the endless wailing of the radio’s Journey power hour doesn’t help.

And so it’s 1 in the morning and Clint’s eyes are tracing every seam of wood in every exposed beam of his loft when the power hour ends and a new program starts up. “You’re listening to WSHL, The Shield,” says the host. Her voice is like honey, pouring out of his clock radio’s shitty speakers in a thick golden wave. “I’m your host, Natasha, and this is Insomniacs Anonymous. If you’ve made it past Delilah and you still can’t sleep, call in, chat with me, and keep your fellow insomniacs company.”

The phone is in Clint’s hand and suddenly he is five again, perched on his mother’s lap. The local radio host, voice blaring like a horn, promises tickets to the circus for the whole family for caller number 13. All he has to do is name something red, and Clint’s little forehead pleats in thought before his mom helps his pudgy fingers dial. “Caller number 13!” the host cries, his voice pulsing through the holes of telephone receiver. “Name something red for us, son,” but Clint can’t remember what the color red even is and his mom whispers _fire truck, honey, say fire truck_ before the tickets go somewhere else.

Clint sets the phone back in its cradle. _You don’t need to call a radio station; what would you even say?_ Instead, he settles back into his pillows and listens to the way Natasha’s voice shifts as she talks. She’s got a low voice, melodious and fluid, and her laughter rings deep and joyful in a way that reminds him of church bells. “What are you doing instead of sleeping?” she asks across the airwaves. “Call in and tell us,” she urges, and people do, sharing their stories of late-night stress cleaning and hourly security rounds through a sleepy nursing home. Some people, like Steve-From-Brooklyn and Tony-From-I’m-Not-Telling, are clearly regulars; her smiles come through the microphone then, as bright and warm as if she were standing right in front of him.

He gives up all pretense of sleeping, or even trying to. It’s 2:30. “If you’re still awake, you’re probably stewing about something,” Natasha says. Her voice has become smoky with use over the hour, winding out of the speakers and evaporating over his ears, and Clint wonders how much longer she’ll be on. “Insomniacs Anonymous can help! Here’s our number…”

 _You don’t need to call a radio station,_ he thinks again, but he’s dialed the number before he can talk himself out of it. _What are you even going to say?_ He expects to get weeded out by an operator, but the line clicks in and there’s a barely discernable crackle that tells him he’s live on air. “Insomniacs Anonymous,” Natasha says right into his ear. “What’s your grievance?”

Clint screws his eyes shut against the memory of that nervous five year old incapable of forming intelligible words. “I can’t stop thinking about the finale of _Dog Cops,_ ” he blurts out. “How could they end the season like that?”

Much to his surprise and immediate gratification, the voice on the other end of the line rises in excitement. “No spoilers!” Natasha yelps. “I can’t watch until tomorrow!” There’s a pause in which he imagines her settling back into her chair, regrouping. “Although I guess that’s technically why you called in,” she says, wry. “You can tell me if you’d like. What was your name again?”

“Oh, uh,” Clint stammers, “I’m Clint. Clint from Bed-Stuy. And I won’t spoil it for you; I just needed someone to… acknowledge my outrage, I guess. You’ll see when you watch it.”

Natasha hums sympathetically. “You watch alone?”

Clint rolls his eyes for the sole benefit of the ceiling. “I only have one friend who will watch it with me, but halfway through she started texting her girlfriend instead. I can’t really fault her for that, though, I guess.”

“I guess not,” she teases, and he smiles in spite of himself. “Well, Clint from Bed-Stuy, I hope getting that off your chest helps you sleep. Don’t you have to work in the morning?”

It’s 2:38; his alarm will ring in three hours and fifty-two minutes. “Ugh,” he says, “Goodnight,” and her laughter follows him off the phone and into his dreams.

\-----

He’s too tired the next day to listen, and then her show’s off over the weekend, and somehow it’s a week before he tunes in again. “Thanks for listening to WSHL, The Shield. I’m Natasha, and this is Insomniacs Anonymous.” Now that he’s not so wound up, he notices the details of her program. There’s no theme music to start the show, just that rich caramel voice that falls in soft buttery folds from the radio. At the beginning, she fields calls of any subject, and it’s only as the clock ticks onward that she starts providing topics. It’s a talk show, mainly, but she plays music every few callers or so, songs that range from the week’s hits to the incredibly obscure.

Clint doesn’t have anything to complain about this time, not really, so he folds his hands behind his head and only pays half attention. Steve-From-Brooklyn calls to bemoan his crush on his best friend, apparently a weekly stressor that the regular listeners of Insomniacs Anonymous all hold strong opinions about. “Just ask him out already,” groans Tony-From-Redacted. Thor-From-Asgard recommends a formal declaration of love, but Peter-From-Space advocates for a boombox outside the window, “Though obviously _not_ Peter Gabriel.”

Natasha moderates the calls with a steady hand and a fond smile that travels through the speakers. She plays Peter-From-Space’s suggested song, a Sam Cooke classic that could make anyone fall in love, then spins on to the next conversation. “Tune in next week for more Steve drama, everyone,” she says with a laugh, but it’s gentle, friendly. “If you’re still up, and I know you are, call in and tell us the burning question that’s keeping you awake. Maybe we can help.”

His fingers only stumble once on the number keys; his voice, however, is a different story. “I’m, uh, this is Clint, from Bed-Stuy, and I was--well, I was just lying here wondering how you got into radio work?”

“Clint-From-Bed-Stuy! I was hoping you’d call back in,” she says, excited, and he feels his entire body blush at the sparkle of her tone. “I watched the finale of _Dog Cops_ and I’m devastated. Devastated!”

Clint shoots up in bed, distracted from his reason for calling. _“Thank_ you!” he sighs in appreciation. “Finally someone understands!”

“It’s character assassination,” Natasha rails. “To suggest that Sergeant Whiskers, the most upstanding member of the force, cheated on the lieutenant exam is ridiculous! More than ridiculous; it’s--” She stops and there’s a huff, then a rueful laugh. “I’m so mad I almost just swore on air. Suffice to say you were right, Clint.”

He likes the way his name sounds when she says it, like she’s smiling without meaning to. He likes that he’s made her smile at all, that he’s made an impression. “I should have recorded that,” he tells her, smiling himself in the darkness of his apartment. “Nobody ever tells me I’m right.”

“If you’re ever in the neighborhood, stop by the station,” she offers. “I’ll get you a copy. Thanks for calling in tonight.” She plays him off with “Atomic Dog” and he sits there in bed, sheets pooled around his waist, grinning like an idiot. He can’t tell if her offer was serious or not, and he realizes that his original question had never been answered, either. _I guess I’ll just have to call again tomorrow and find out._

\-----

He wakes when Kate slaps a particularly large file next to his head on the desk with a resounding _thwack_. “Morning, sunshine,” she chirps, kind enough to pour Clint a cup of coffee from the machine on the counter. Clint grumbles incoherently and Kate laughs, immediately negating the minimal amount of goodwill she’d just earned from the coffee. “What is going on with you?” she asks, leaning down to pull up one drooping eyelid and peer into Clint’s eye. “This is the third time this week.”

Clint slaps her hand away and snatches his coffee. “You’re an asshole, Bishop,” he groans, adding another strike against his officemate when she does nothing but laugh. In fairness, he’s been tallying strikes against Kate Bishop since she’d eaten all his tapioca pudding cups three years ago, and Kate’s been tallying strikes against Clint since he’d replaced all Kate’s vanilla pudding with mayo in retaliation. Kate is probably his best friend. “It was just another late night,” he continues over the laughter.

“Doing what?” Kate asks, skepticism quirking her dark brows. _“Dog Cops_ is over and we both know you’re too old to hang around the club scene anymore. What else could you possibly be doing?”

“I have.. stuff,” Clint huffs. He doesn’t; well, there’s the archery gym and his tenement building cookouts and Lucky, but that’s not staying up late, snoring at his desk stuff. Usually he’s asleep by 11, even on the weekends. “Real stuff. Important stuff.”

“Sure, Clint.” She’s still chuckling a little. “Sure.”

\-----

“If you could live anywhere in the world,” he asks one slow night when there’s more music than conversation, “Where would it be?”

One thing he likes about Natasha is that she never throws an answer out off the cuff, even if the air prickles with silence for a beat or two. “Hmm,” she muses, “Italy; Florence, I think. Can you imagine living in the middle of all that incredible architecture? I think I’d just die.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t live there after all, then,” Clint suggests, and she laughs.

“Maybe not,” is her rueful reply. “We’ll just have to visit.” She clears her throat. “What about you?”

“Um,” Clint says, picking a name at random off the unfinished globe that is his geographical knowledge, “Argentina?” He’s never been to the country nor ever been particularly interested in visiting, but he’d gotten stuck on the way _we_ sounded on the crest of her voice. “Sure, Argentina, let’s go with that. Any architectural wonders there you’d like to see?”

She likes the arts, he gathers: one night around 2 she spends his entire three minutes on the line summarizing the plot of _La bohème,_ and another they collectively lament missing Baryshnikov’s one man show when it was in town. “You like ballet?” she asks, the note of surprise quickly surpassed by excitement. “Did you go to Alvin Ailey’s last show? Oh--it’s been three minutes, call back after the commercial break and tell me!”

Another night of empty air, Clint lies with the phone wedged between his ear and his shoulder and argues against the likelihood of aliens attacking New York. “Only Americans think New York is the best city in the world,” he reasons. “And, anyway, what sensible alien race wants to invade a planet that hasn’t even managed to land a person on its nearest neighbor?”

Natasha’s sigh is melodramatically noisy. “Maybe they’re capitalist aliens,” she puts forth, as if this is a sensible answer. “Maybe they want to emulate our multicultural society! I ask you, have you ever seen an alien movie with a diverse population of invading species?”

Clint tries to hold his laugh away from the phone. “You got me there,” he admits. He finds himself admitting a lot about himself: Natasha always manages to lob his questions back around to him, often without answering them herself. What he’s learned about her has been through conversational inference and random asides, little bits and pieces that come together to form one of the most interesting people he’s ever known. Getting to know someone without seeing them is strange: he knows she loves the deep greens of the forests upstate, but not if she wears them often, or if they complement her eyes. She’s sharp and clever and witty, staggeringly charismatic over the airwaves, but he’s never seen her face light up with laughter, can only wonder what the smirk that surely twists her lips looks like.

“Clint?” she asks, voice warm in his cool handset. “Did I lose you?”

“No,” he says, wanting to believe that the soft sound against the microphone is her sighing in relief. He closes his eyes and lets himself imagine that she values these nocturnal conversations as much as he does, just for a second. “No, I’m still here, I promise.”

\-----

He tells himself he’s listening for the community.  Five weeks in, he’s got a good handle on the regulars of Insomniacs Anonymous. Steve-From-Brooklyn is the stoic of the group, serious and passionate at equal turns. He seems to have been calling the longest: Natasha greets him like an old friend, asking about his job teaching high school history and teasing him about having never seen a _Star Wars_ movie. His counterbalance is Tony, who talks fast, thinks faster, and never says he’s from the same place twice. Clint guesses that he works in the tech industry, developing robots from the way half of what he says goes way over his head. There’s Bruce, who calls from his night shift in the labs at the Museum of Natural Sciences; Wanda-From-East-Village, up late most nights studying at the NYU libraries; and Scott, an engineer of some sort who Clint is 80% sure is a burglar, and who always claims to be in San Francisco.

Familiarity with someone’s sleeping patterns, or lack thereof, feels strangely intimate, which perhaps explains why they’re all so comfortable using the radio station as a forum to tell each other what to do. Aside from Steve’s ongoing soap opera, they argue whether Bruce should reach out to his ex, or if that new shawarma place in Midtown is any good, or if Tony’s a jerk or not, and on and on and on. Steve’s the peacekeeper, half the time dialing in right on Tony’s heels to smooth things over. Even so, and despite the fact that none of them have ever met or interacted anywhere other than this program, they all seem to genuinely like each other.

Clint can’t help but be drawn in; he’s always been a sucker for this kind of family, scrappy and messy and formed by choice. His voice shakes the first time he adds his opinion about Wanda’s unhelpful advisor, but Steve calls after and says, “I agree with the last guy,” with reaffirming approval. Soon he’s calling every night, and Wanda-From-East-Village is just Wanda, a college kid staying up late to make the most of her scholarship, and Clint thinks he might himself be a regular somewhere for the first time in his life.

So yeah, he tells himself he’s there for the community, and he is, but one night the question keeping Tony awake is, “Yeah, hey, I want to know what’s keeping Bed-Stuy up with us every night. Is it our--that is to say, _my_ \--witty company? Or… something else, some _one_ else?” He laughs even as Natasha admonishes him. “Just a question,” he adds, but there’s a dangerous shine to his voice that Steve’s beleaguered follow up call can’t cover up. _I know your secret, Bed-Stuy,_ that laugh says, _I know exactly why you keep coming back._

The truth is that Clint comes back night after night not for the group, not because he’s desperate for a distraction from his insomnia; but for Natasha, for her dry wit, for her sublime musical tastes, for the even-handed way she moderates her little family and all the other listeners passing through. The truth is that he’s rearranged his entire schedule, taking naps right after work and switching his gym hour to his lunch break, all just so that he can stay awake long enough to hear her wish everyone a “good morning and not-terrible day.” The truth is--

He picks up the phone and dials to avoid finishing that thought. “Clint!” Natasha cheers when he introduces himself. “I thought we’d be hearing from you soon.”

“Yeah, well,” Clint says after a moment, clearing his heart from his throat. “I had to defend myself.”

Natasha’s laugh has somehow become his favorite sound in the universe. “Please,” she scoffs, “Ignore Tony; the rest of us do. Hey, I checked out that book you recommended the other day! Call back in next week and ask me how it was, okay?”

“Oh, you got _The Martian?”_ Clint enthuses, wishing he could stop himself from sounding so eager. “I can’t wait to hear what you think! And, hey, um, Natasha--” He wants to reach out and hold her hand, look into her eyes, smile and ask her to meet him at his favorite cafe.

“Yes?” The pause is deliciously tense, crackling along the line, and then her voice is soft and rough around the edges like maybe, hopefully, she can’t breathe either. “Clint?”

Here, in this moment, he wants to hold a woman he’s never met, kiss a face he couldn’t pick out in a crowd. “Just, ah.” He swallows hard on his papery throat, hyper aware of the dead air. “I just wanted to say that Insomniacs Anonymous is the best,” he blurts. “Even Tony, I guess.”

“I guess,” Natasha hums, “Though now he’ll be calling back any minute to argue. Still. Thanks.” She plays him off with “Fly Me to the Moon,” Sinatra’s voice floating to the rafters. _In other words, hold my hand,_ he sings, _in other words, darling, kiss me,_ and Clint knows that he’s just bought a one-way ticket to trouble.

“The truth is, Lucky,” he says, but he can’t say the words aloud, not even to his dog sleeping on his feet. To the ceiling he thinks, _the truth is--the truth is--_

\-----

“So I’m kind of in love with this girl,” Clint tells Kate as they walk through Central Park with coffee. “Or woman, I guess; I don’t know how old she is.”

Kate stops dead in the middle of the path. “Where did _you_ meet a girl?” she asks with what Clint considers an undue amount of skepticism. “Or woman, or whatever.”

Clint bristles and continues walking. “I meet women,” he lies.

“Sure,” Kate says. “So where’d you meet her, then?”

“On the radio,” he mumbles into his coffee, and pretends not to hear Kate choking.

“Clint Barton,” she gasps through her laughter, “Please tell me this is a joke. _Please_ don’t tell me you’re in love with a woman you’ve never even met.”

“Fine,” he says, kicking savagely at a rock, “I won’t.” Stomping off feels immature, so he tries to make it look like he has somewhere to go other than the nearest trash can.

There’s a huff behind him and then Kate’s got him by the arm. “Okay,” she sighs, achieving both apology and melodrama in that petulant kid sister way of hers. They plunk down on a bench and she turns the full intensity of her bright gaze on him. “Tell me everything.”

“She’s the radio host of this late night show called Insomniacs Anonymous,” Clint gushes. “I started listening the night of the _Dog Cops_ finale and _god,_ Kate, she’s got the most _amazing_ voice, I can’t even _describe._ I just stayed up that whole night listening to her talk.”

“Seriously?” Kate raises one black eyebrow.

“Seriously,” Clint agrees. “And then--I don’t know, I started staying up just to listen, and then I started calling in, and all of a sudden…” He throws up his hands, at a loss. “I don’t know what happened, but now I’m a regular caller on a radio show for insomniacs because I just want to make her laugh, or hear what she thinks about… well, everything, really.”

Kate regards him solemnly, all joking set aside. “What does she like?” she asks, and Clint tells her about the week they argued every night about the best Star Fleet captain (him: Janeway; her: Kirk), and the literary references that seem to be lost on the rest of the regulars besides him, and her unabashed love of Hall & Oates, and how she laughs at Steve’s jokes even when they’re terrible and never talks over Bruce’s absurdly soft voice, detail after detail springing to the forefront of his memory until Kate rolls her eyes and says, “Enough, Barton, enough.”

The trees behind their bench rustle in judgement as Clint stares into his coffee and Kate stares over his shoulder into middle distance. “Do you know if she likes you, too?” she asks. There’s pity in her voice, and worry and exasperation and love; he’s gotten pretty good at unraveling the emotional tapestry of a voice. “Do you even know if she’s single?”

“I don’t know.” Clint drains the last of his coffee and squashes the paper cup in his hand. “I don’t know anything,” he says, and throws his cup across the sidewalk and into the trash.

\-----

When Tony, calling a week later from “the void,” says, “I have an idea,” a bad feeling rises on the back of Clint’s neck. “A good one, this time,” he promises.

“I’m skeptical,” Natasha admits, “But I’ll allow it.”

“We should have a meet-up, face to face, I mean,” he says, speech fast with enthusiasm. “Think about it: I talk to you people more than I talk to my own--well, I don’t talk to my mother, but the point still stands! Some of us are calling in here every week, or day, _or hour,”_ this an aural aside from the corner of his mouth, “And we couldn’t even pick each other out of a police line-up!”

“Of course it’s a police line-up with you, Tony,” Natasha teases. “I guess you’ve called in worse suggestions--and oh look, the phone lines are lighting up.”

Clint lies paralyzed in his bed as the regulars, as well as some less frequent listeners, eagerly line up to support the plan. “I _need_ a reason to get out of the library,” groans Wanda, swearing she’s old enough to legally get into the Hell’s Kitchen bar Tony suggests. “I have next Saturday off,” says Bruce at nearly normal volume. Steve is dared to bring the best friend he’s so in love with, Scott-From-San-Francisco asks if he can bring his whole crew, and nobody takes up Peter-From-Space’s offer to host a rap battle.

“Isn’t Bed-Stuy going to come?” someone calls in to ask, and Clint, recognizing the voice, rolls over to scowl at the radio. “Oh, sorry, this is Kate, and I just _really_ wanted to meet him.”

“Me, too,” Natasha says, trailing off before quickly adding, “We all do, of course. Clint, and anyone who’s listening, call in and let us know if you’ll join us this Saturday night in Hell’s Kitchen for the first annual Insomniacs Anonymous meeting! I’m Natasha, and this is WSHL, The Shield.” She plays a garden-variety party anthem to lead into commercials, but the lyrics ring into Clint’s dreams: _what are you waiting for? What are you waiting for?_

\-----

“You’re going,” Kate declares the next day as she slams the apartment door closed.

“I’m not, actually,” Clint calls from the sleeping loft. “Nice try, though. A for effort.” He turns up the volume on NPR and resumes his attempts to fold a fitted sheet. It’s not going very well.

“You look like an idiot,” Kate informs him, having shed her jacket and stomped her combat boots up the stairs. “Which is fitting, because you’re also _being an idiot.”_

Clint lifts up the sheet that’s tossed over his head to direct his glare more precisely in her direction. “Do I walk into _your_ home and insult you?” he accuses, even though he knows the answer is a resounding yes.

“I’m not dignifying that with a response,” Kate sniffs, picking her way through the scattered laundry and dropping herself directly onto the pile Clint’s currently working on. “Would you stop pretending to be Martha Stewart and talk to me, please? Why aren’t you going to go?”

He lets her pull him down next to her on the bed. “Katie, I can’t go to this thing,” he sighs with a one-shouldered shrug. “If I show up and she’s there, then--well, then she’ll--”

“See you?” Kate suggests. “Would that really be so awful?”

“Well, _yeah._ ” The weight of it had sat on his chest all night, crushing the air from his lungs. Clint likes to think he knows his measure, and while he knows he’s nice to animals and donates to the ACLU and generally tries not to be an asshole, he also knows that he’s kind of a mess. If he confines his crush to the four walls of his apartment, then he won’t have to deal with it imploding when it turns out that she just doesn’t think of him that way. He’s built up so much meaning to every three minute conversation in the dark hours of the morning that--well, not to be so embarrassingly teenaged about the whole thing, but if it turns out he’s the only one that replays their conversations on loop instead of listening to the budgeting meeting, then he can’t guarantee that he won’t walk directly into the bathroom and hide there for the rest of the night. “It’s just--you know, if I don’t meet her, then she can’t reject me, right?”

Kate squints at him, and for a second he thinks she’s going to call him stupid or smack him upside the head, but all she does is rest her small hand on his. “You know you’re a catch, right, Clint?” she says, a careful kindness in her frank blue gaze that makes his own eyes prickle. “I mean, you’re like a million years old and you need to exfoliate, like, _ever,_ but you’re also intelligent and kind and funny about once a year. Natasha would be stupid to turn you down.” She grins and pokes him in the side to signal the end of her emotional maturity. “Also, America says you have great abs, so that’s something.”

Clint feels experimentally at his midsection. “I’m impressed America thinks _anything_ about me is great,” he says, “So I’ll take it, although I don’t know when exactly I’m supposed to show Natasha my abs during a social mixer.”

“Oh, Clint,” sighs Kate, exasperated. “Just call tonight and say you’re going, okay? I’m pretty sure she wants you to.”

\----

“I’m so glad you’re coming,” Natasha says through the phone that night. Clint wants to believe there’s something extra in her voice, something that perfectly matches the stuttering frequency of his heartbeat. “It wouldn’t have been the same without you.”

\-----

Kate shows up without asking on Saturday evening. “No,” she says decisively after a long look at the outfit that only took, oh, three hours for him to finally decide on. “I know for a fact that Mouserat shirt has a hole in the armpit.”

“What??” Clint peers at the shirt in dismay. “How--”

“And you need to wear a jacket; Josie’s is a nice place,” she continues, turning to flick authoritatively through his closet. “Here, take this--”

It’s easier, in situations like these, to just go along for the ride, which is how he ends up standing outside Josie’s rooftop lounge an hour later in his darkest jeans, least offensive sneakers, and a jacket over his _Martian Chronicles_ shirt. Whatever Kate did to his blond hair, it looks better than it has in weeks, and he texts her: [ _okay, so you were right, i do look pretty good._ ]

[ _i’m right about most things,_ ] she texts back. [ _like how i know you’re standing outside the bar right now. GO._ ]

[ _it’s times like these that make me think you’re a witch,_ ] he tells her as the elevator doors slide closed. The lounge on the tenth floor is elegant, tastefully furnished with dark woods and tufted red leather that automatically make Clint feel scruffy in comparison. While it’s not a large venue, he’s still surprised to find it crowded enough that he has to squeeze through multiple groups of people to find the WSHL station manager, Phil, who’s manning the name tag table.

“Is everyone here for the radio thing?” Clint calls over the din, scrawling _Clint (Bed-Stuy)_ on a sticker and smoothing it over his chest.

Phil shrugs. “I think so,” he says, scanning the room. “Lots of people brought friends, I guess, because everyone wants to see if--” His eyes dart down to Clint’s name tag and he coughs away the rest of the sentence.

Clint tilts his head. “See if what?”

“Um,” Phil says, “See if people look the way they sound, I guess. Anyway, the bar’s over there, and I think you’ll find the regulars standing on the patio.” He hurries off without another word, leaving Clint to drift towards the bar in hopes of settling the clamor of his jangling nerves.

It’s an open bar, and Clint is puzzled why a radio station would foot such a surely enormous bill. “Oh, no,” says the bartender, pointing the same direction Phil had, towards the regulars. “Tony Stark’s here: he rented the whole place out.”

Clint whips around and stares, forgetting his drink. Sure enough, New York’s flashiest, most obnoxious genius is holding court, speaking animatedly to a hulk of a man nearly double his size. “Of course you’re Tony Stark,” he says when he reaches the group, still in disbelief.

“Guilty,” says Tony ( _Tony Stark!_ ) with an unrepentant smirk, which grows into a grin as he looks Clint up and down. “And you’re Bed-Stuy! We all thought you’d chicken out.”

“ _I_ didn’t,” says the man who Clint identifies as Steve, tall and golden blond and entirely too muscular to be a history teacher.

“Nobody did,” says Wanda, long dark hair rippling as she shakes her head. She’s smaller than he’d imagined, compact and mysterious in her red leather jacket and dark eyes. “Not even Tony; he just doesn’t want you to know he’s capable of normal human emotions.”

“ _Emotions._ ” Tony shudders as Steve takes charge of introducing Bruce, the giant that towers over them all and explains in his trademark soft voice that he’s just getting over the flu and so is a little green around the gills, and Scott, whose perpetual sardonicism is mellowed by the fact that he pours a little water and sugar into an empty ashtray to feed a couple of tired bees that bump into his chest. As introductions fall away into conversation, Clint comes to the horrible realization of what Tony had said: _we all thought you’d chicken out._

“Wait,” Clint blurts, cutting off the beginning of Steve’s diatribe about the education system in America. “You all… _know?_ That I’m--I mean--” He looks around the circle at the various expressions of _oh, honey,_ and his shoulders slump. “Ah, fuck.”

“Why do you think I suggested this?” Tony says, not entirely unkind. “I can only listen to so much moon-eyed nonsense--”

“What Tony means, I think,” interrupts Steve, carrying his role as the peacekeeper off the airwaves and into real life, “Is that we’ve all, independently, long suspected that you two had feelings for each other.” His smile turns sheepish. “I would have suggested something like this a month ago, but I was enjoying having the spotlight on someone else’s romantic problems for a change.”

 _And if they’ve all noticed,_ Clint reasons with a turn of his stomach, _then everyone else probably has, too. And if everyone knows, then that means they’re all here--they’re all just waiting for--_ “I need a drink,” he says, fleeing for the bar. He tries, at least, though he’s waylaid by Peter-From-Space, who’s wearing a vintage Walk-Man and is really from Greenwich, and Kamala, who’s come all the way from Jersey City, and a few other people whose names he vaguely recognizes. Everyone’s nice; everyone looks at his name tag and smiles just a little bigger, a little more knowing. By the time he reaches the bar, the whispers have spread, and even the bartender knows he’s the sad sap in love with the radio host.

“ _You’re_ the guy everyone’s talking about?” he asks. “In that case--” He pours Clint a double shot of whiskey, the good stuff that burns all the way down.

“Thanks,” Clint gasps, peeling off his name tag and dropping it into the empty glass before turning for the door. He now realizes what a colossal mistake it had been to come to this event, how stupid he’d been to bundle up his foolish hopes and carry them here on his back. A few conversations did not a romance make. “Listen,” he tells Phil the station manager, still keeping the name tag piles freakishly neat. “I have to go, something came up. Can I leave a message for Natasha? I don’t want her to think I didn’t come.”

Phil looks up from his work and studies him for a beat. “I’m sure you don’t,” he says mildly. “There’s some paper in the manager’s office right over there.” He points to a door that says STAFF ONLY and waits until Clint’s through before going back to his stacks.

There’s someone in the office when he enters, a woman with her back to the door. Her hair is the most vibrant scarlet he’s ever seen, shoulder length and wavy, and her black jeans could be painted on for how well they fit. He stares for a second before clearing his throat, trying to look for paper on the desk behind her.

“Phil?” The woman turns and Clint stops looking anywhere else. She is possibly-- _no,_ he thinks, _definitely--_ the most beautiful woman he has ever seen in real life. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was head over heels for Natasha, whom he’d at this probably point never meet, then he could see himself falling for this woman’s porcelain skin and strong arms, let alone the way she wears that beaten leather jacket like she was born to kick ass. When she smiles at him in polite confusion, the corners of her dark green eyes tip up and he thinks of Natasha’s forests up north, verdant and deep. “You’re not Phil,” she says, curiosity folded into the sweet valleys of her voice and _oh my god it’s--_

“Natasha?” It’s all Clint can do to not clutch his heart and fall over in immediate cardiac arrest.

Her hair cascades like a forest fire over her shoulder as she tilts her head in acknowledgement. “The one and only,” she says, an embarrassed little smile pulling at her cherry tinted lips. “And you are?”

 _Dead,_ Clint thinks. _Totally fucked. In way more trouble than I initially thought._ “Uh, Clint,” he says. ‘I’m Clint, from Bed-Stuy.” He holds out a hand and prays to god she can’t see it trembling. “It’s, um. It’s great to finally meet you.”

He thinks he’s doing a good imitation of a casual, not-lovelorn fan, but she freezes as soon as he says his name, her eyes overly bright as they look him up and down. “You’re… taller than I thought you’d be,” she says faintly. “Um… cool shirt, though.”

Clint looks down to remember what he’s even wearing. “Oh, yeah,” he says, “I wore it because--” _Because you said_ The Martian Chronicles _was one of your favorites and I really wanted to see you smile when you saw it._ That’s definitely not a cool thing to say. “Um, because I love Ray Bradbury,” he finishes lamely.

“Oh,” she says awkwardly. “Me, too.” _I know,_ he wants to say, _I know so many things about you that my heart’s about to burst;_ but he can’t say any of that because Natasha in real life looks at him like he’s an alien, and he’s getting the very real suspicion that all of his melodramatic fears are true. “Um. How did you even get in here?”

“Phil sent me,” Clint says, glad to know what to say this time even if it does bring an odd sort of scowl to her face. “I needed paper because--” _Because I was about to leave before I made a fool of myself in front of you, which I’m now doing, anyway._ But he can’t say that, so he waves the question away. “It doesn’t matter now.” She’s watching him intently, her green eyes so big and luminous that he has to look away. It all feels slightly off, like he took a wrong turn and now somehow the woman he’s been falling in love with night after night is standing in front of him, more unreachable than ever before.

 _This was a mistake._ “Listen, I gotta go,” Clint says, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “You know, they’re all out there waiting for you,” he adds with as much of a smile as he can muster. “It’s not so bad, really, and the drinks are free. You should go.” Natasha nods wordlessly and he turns, defeated, to reach for the door.

“Wait, don’t--” She moves faster than he expected, jumping around him to bar his exit. “I’m sorry, I’m being the weirdest person ever, but--” She reaches out and sets one electrifying hand on his chest. “Please don’t go just yet.”

Clint walks backward from her touch and leans on the office desk, and Natasha stays where she is, one hand worrying the other. “Why are you hiding in this office?” he asks carefully, watching the long lines of her fingers trace over and over each other. “Everyone out there is dying to meet you.”

Her teeth dig into her lower lip, but she doesn’t say anything for a long minute. “Could I just--?” she asks at last, spinning to face the door halfway through the aborted question. Some of the tension smooths away from her shoulders and she sighs even as Clint goggles in confusion at her back for the second time tonight. “I’m hiding in this office,” Natasha at last begins. She’s speaking more quickly than she normally does, the words tumbling out of her mouth. “I’m hiding in this office because Phil told me you had arrived and--and--and I couldn’t go out there! What if you hated me? What if you had brought a _date_ , and I’d have to stand there and make nice, like an idiot! God, I’d just be so embarrassed I’d probably melt there on the spot. And then Phil sends you in here anyway, looking like _that--_ ”

Clint has no choice but to direct his affronted glare at her back. “Looking like what?”

Natasha finally turns back to face him and throws up her hands in frustration. “Looking like a fucking underwear model!” she almost yells. “I thought you’d look… I don’t know, _normal_ hot.”

Clint stares at her, at the bright pink of her cheeks and the unruly beauty of her hair. “Wait,” he says positive that he’s missed a step somewhere. “Hold on. You think _I’m_ the one who looks like a model here?” He must have heard that part wrong. “And… are you saying that you’re hiding in here… because you _like_ me?”

The blush spreads across her face and up her ears. “Maybe,” she hedges, crossing her arms in defiance. “So?”

He could laugh, really, if it wasn’t all so close to being a disaster. _“So,”_ he says, crossing the short distance between them to set a hand on each shoulder. _“So,_ every single person out in that bar has worked out that I’m half in love with you, and is here to see what happens when we finally meet. _So,_ I almost didn’t come tonight because I thought I’d just about die if you showed up with a date. _So,_ I’m in this stupid office looking for paper to write you a note that says, ‘sorry, Natasha, but I had to go, love Clint,’ because I figured I’d humiliated myself enough at this point and didn’t want to get publically turned down to boot. _So--_ ”

He doesn’t really know what he’s going to say next, which is just as well, because Natasha kisses him, her soft scarlet lips fitting perfectly against his. Clint lets himself melt, lets his hands fall from her shoulders and circle her waist, lets the warmth that emanates through the faded cotton of her Cantina Band shirt sink into his bones. His tongue swirls against hers as he pulls her closer, and her eyelashes brush closed along his cheek. He hadn’t let himself consider this possibility, and now the novelty of her tangibility is intoxicating: the silken feeling of her hair through his fingers, the sweet almond of her perfume somehow intriguing and familiar, the extrasensory feeling of _right_ ness that clicks into place when her hands slip under his jacket and map the terrain of his back.

“Can we go back to the part where you’re half in love with me?” Natasha asks when they finally break apart, exhilarated and breathless. Her eyes sparkle so brightly and her smile is so joyous that he has to drop his head to her shoulder. “I think I need more details.”

“It might be more than half,” Clint admits into the crook of her neck, pressing kiss after kiss there, higher and higher, until all he can hear is the bells of her laughter ringing in his ears.


End file.
